Up to a million Canadians would struggle to cope with a 1 per cent rise in interest rates with 700,000 at risk from even a 0.25 per cent rise

A new market report from real estate agents in the Greater Toronto Area profiles recent home buyers as buying a typical-priced $672,023 homes with an average downpayment of 29 per cent.

This cash was from savings (in almost half of the cases), existing home equity (around a quarter) or gift (13 per cent). Seventeen per cent of respondents to the IPSOS survey for the Toronto Real Estate Board funded their downpayment from ‘other’ sources.

Fixed rate closed mortgages with a 5-year term remained the most popular choice of home loan with rates between 2.0 and 2.99 per cent.

The figures show that average income of homebuyers was $98,000 and the cost of the home, including downpayment, was 27 per cent of monthly income, rising to 39 per cent when property taxes and other costs are included.

The share of first-time buyers slipped slightly from a year earlier with 51 per cent making a move into homeownership.